Unbalance
by Imaginity
Summary: Rey is in the hands of the First Order. Having thought of nothing but her while he was away, Kylo is surprised to find that everything is different when he returns to the base. The helpless girl he sees before him is nothing like the Rey, he thought he knew; her spirit has been broken, the fire within her has been quenched. What happened while he was away?
1. Chapter 1

**Hi readers! This is a Reylo fanfic, I just love the idea of what the two might be together. It's going to be romantic, but also angsty and very dark in later chapters, so if you're not in the mood for that, read something else for now. (Oh, and there will probably also be smut later on). Our story starts a month after The Last Jedi ends, so there will be many spoilers from the two films. However, Snoke isn't dead, and Rey is a prisoner of the First Order, so some things are quite different. Hope you'll enjoy it, you're very welcome to let me know if you do!**

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Kylo could hardly focus on where he was going; just a minute ago, he had received a call from a rather curt General Hux. Supreme Leader Snoke had finally decided that the time had come for Kylo to return to the base. He was a lot more excited than he should be - his heart was beating fast, and he was gripping the yoke of his jet-black Starfighter so tight that it hurt.

He let out a deep sigh and tried to relax. He knew that he wasn't supposed to feel this eager to go back after just one month away; had his excitement stemmed from the fact that he would now be able to play an active role in bringing down the Resistance, it would have been understandable. However, something completely unrelated to fighting was on his mind; he was finally going to see the girl again. He was going to see _Rey._

Ever since the day that she so bravely arrived alone at their base in his father's ship, Kylo had been longing to see her again. He'd been furious when it turned out that Snoke had been the one connecting them by use of the Force all along. It was slightly embarrassing for him to admit to himself that he had fully believed that there was something special binding them together, something that the two of them shared. He had feared that this something might have been a shared bloodline, but Rey had turned out to be the unwanted child of a pair of gamblers. They'd sold the poor girl on that dismal planet, Jakku. What Kylo had hoped was a special bond, unique to the two of them, had just been a tactical move by the Supreme Leader.

While Kylo felt sorry for Rey, he could not help feeling a bit pleased by this newly found knowledge of her parentage. He'd only just had the time to tell her the truth, before Snoke sent him and Hux off to fight the Resistance on Crait and a group of stormtroopers took her away. When he returned with the news that the Resistance had managed to escape, Snoke had decided to punish him for his stupidity and failure. Although he wanted nothing more than to stay at the base and prove his worth, hed was sent off on a mission to solve a political conflict on Cantonica following the rebel led destruction of some rich weapon dealers' property.

The mission had been tedious and boring. Over and over during long discussions between narrow-minded businessmen, Kylo's thoughts had drifted off. In his mind, it was _her_ brown eyes he saw, and they were always full of her characteristic hope and determination. She was the only person who truly believed that he could be something other than what he was.

When she first started appearing in front of him, Kylo had been shocked, but also intrigued by her. His head was full of unanswered questions: Who was this girl, why did she radiate power comparable to none that he'd ever encountered in someone so young before, and, the most incomprehensible question of them all, why did she believe that he - a man who had murdered his own father in cold blood, could be redeemed? Although her stubbornness and self-righteousness had left him fuming time after time, he held her in high esteem. Deep down he understood that she was fighting for a cause she believed in, just as he had when he first became Snoke's apprentice. This, he admired and respected her for.

For so long, Kylo had sought to become immune to the temptations of the Light. During those conversations with Rey, however, something had been awakened in him which he thought he'd lost forever. Most importantly, she had made him feel guilty. Guilty about killing his father, who had never been able to connect with Kylo, but who had loved him in spite of their differences, and who Rey had looked up to so much. Guilty about forsaking his mother, although she had always been caught up in her precious Rebellion, enough to abandoned him with an uncle he hardly knew. In Rey's eyes, he saw them both in a new light, he saw how - in spite of the injustice they had done him, they were really the heroes people believed them to be.

X

When Kylo finally arrived at the hangar bay of the _Supremacy,_ the mega-class Star Dreadnought from which the First Order was currently operating, he was greeted by rows of stormtroopers neatly lined up in expectation of his arrival. To his great displeasure, he was also met by the pasty face of General Hux, whose red hair stood out in a sea of white masks. Kylo acknowledged him with a quick nod. Hux returned the gesture, and took a quick step towards him: "Welcome back," he said, with his usual air of reluctance to show Kylo the respect he deserved. "The Supreme Leader is expecting the both of us immediately," he continued, eyes expressionless. Kylo let out a deep sigh in annoyance, not audible from below his mask, and followed the man.

As they walked in silence down the corridors of the large spaceship, Kylo recalled the last time he had been face to face with Supreme Leader Snoke. His mother and the remaining group of people still supporting the Rebellion had been right where he wanted them, yet they managed to slip through his fingers. It had been an embarrassing fiasco; Luke Skywalker had played games with him as if he was nothing but an inexperienced child. He had been mocked and humiliated; yet deep down he felt a tiny bit of relief knowing that his mother had made it out safely - he didn't feel completely ready to let go of her yet.

Snoke had been extremely displeased by his failure. He did not express his disappointment out loud, but Kylo could feel the anger radiating from him before he even entered the room. Kylo had been sent off with the message that once Snoke saw fit for him to return, they would begin turning the girl to the Dark Side. In the meanwhile, she would remain locked up and undisturbed; perhaps some time alone would make her desperate enough to do anything to get out, Snoke claimed.

In his mind, Kylo deeply doubted this; he'd seen the determination in her eyes, and knew that _nothing_ would make her change her position and turn to the Dark Side. A month of solitude wouldn't be enough to break the spirit of this fierce Jedi. She was used to feeling lonely, that much he knew. He had detected it during his interrogation of her on Starkiller Base, and again during their brief Force meetings. The feeling was painfully familiar to him; before he had embraced the Dark Side, he had felt it often. A loneliness so horrible that it made him feel as if a fist was clenching his heart, trying to wring out every last drop of happiness inside him. He would feel unable to breathe, but at the same time want to scream his lungs out in despair. Snoke's training had taught him to embrace that pain, transform it into anger, and then into pure, unlimited power. People usually shrink into nothing when they are unable to express their loneliness, but Kylo had faced it, knowing – by the guidance of Snoke – that it was just another weakness he needed to root out. Embracing the darkness inside him had enabled him to grow much more powerful than the Light ever could.

Since his thoughts were still circling around Rey, Kylo forced himself to clear his mind before he entered Snoke's throne room with Hux by his side. The Supreme Leader was sat on his throne, expecting them. The light reflecting off the walls of the grand room drenched the alien in an omnious red light, and Kylo – though used to the sight – felt himself tense as he walked closer.

To his relief, he didn't have to act as if Rey hadn't been on his mind for long, as Snoke instantly brought the girl back to his attention. Kylo could feel the Force flowing from his master, as he demanded that Kylo began convincing their prisoner to become Snoke's second apprentice immediately: "Gain her trust," he rasped, "torture her if you have to. Bend her will. Show her the advantages of the Dark Side." The alien looked down at both of them and slowly started smiling: "With the girl by your side, the three of you will conquer the galaxy."

X

Rey was curled up on the floor in the corner of her cell. Calling it a that was actually a bit of a misrepresentation; it was a bedroom with a bathroom attached to it, more than she'd ever had before. Nevertheless, she kept thinking of it as her cell. The door was locked from the outside, after all, and she knew that two armed stormtroopers were guarding it day and night.

In her hands she was clutching two small dolls. They were made from a bit of fabric that she'd torn from the bottom of her trousers, the same trousers that she'd worn ever since she left Ahch-To. She'd often made dolls like these as a child. She used to play with them during the long, lonely evenings, when it was too dark to scavenge through junk to find something valuable, but too early to go to sleep. She had pretended like they were her parents, and made up elaborate stories about their adventurous and heroic lives. Her stories had usually ended with them conquering whatever evil they were fighting and returning to Jakku, to be reunited with their beloved daughter whom they'd missed so dearly. Now she was lying on the floor of an enormous battleship belonging to the First Order, making up similar stories.

Her new stories took different directions than the ones she used to make up, though; she no longer fantasised about her parents, who had turned out to be no one after all, just a couple of gamblers who had no love in their heart for her. No, her new stories were about people who really cared about what happened to her; Finn, General Organa, Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca, and yes, even Han Solo from time to time, alive and well in the safety of her mind. They were on their way to save her right this moment, she would imagine, and never would she have to return to this hellhole again.

Rey's thoughts were abruptly interrupted by the sound of someone speaking to the stormtroopers outside her door. She was overwhelmed by a feeling of fear; It couldn't have been more than a couple of hours since the last time they brought her food, so if someone wanted to enter her room, it could only mean one thing. _He is back already_ , she thought. It was difficult to keep track on the days in here, but she knew that there were usually more than a couple of days between his visits to her cell, and he had been here just last night. _I can't handle this. Not again._

She was still curled up in the corner, frozen in place, when she heard the wooshing sound of the doors sliding open as he entered her cell. She knew that she should be on her knees, awaiting his commands, but she was overwhelmed by fear and couldn't possibly face him.

Something felt different this time, though. He didn't come closer, didn't say anything. It felt as if he'd stopped dead in his tracks the second he'd entered the room. She was breathing hard, clutching her dolls to her chest.

"Rey?" the person blurted out.

Her heart stopped beating for a second; she could recognise that deep voice anywhere. She immediately sat up and looked at him. By the door to her cell stood a tall dark figure draped in a long cloak. Her eyes searched for his face underneath the black hood, but found only the intimidating metal mask which he had worn the first time she'd met him. She drew a sharp breath.

 _Kylo Ren._

X

Kylo had been so excited to see Rey that he had stormed off straight after the meeting with Snoke without paying any attention to the look of disapproval he received from General Hux. He decided on the way that he was going to keep his mask on, to avoid the embarrassment of her noticing how extremely nervous he was about seeing her again. He already felt insecure about his looks, and sweating like a teenage boy wasn't going to help him. With a tight grip on his lightsaber he entered the room, convinced that she would put up a fierce fight as soon as she saw him, just as she'd done multiple times before. He stopped as soon as he was inside the room. It was.. _empty?_

 _Where the hell is she?_

His eyes searched the room a second time. This time, something caught his attention. A bundle of grey fabric seemed to be lying in the corner of the room. Or was it a person?

"Rey?" he asked in disbelief.

She immediately sat up and looked at him. Kylo was speechless. _She's changed so much._

The girl in front of him was much thinner than what he remembered from their brief encounters before the battle of Crait. She had always been slender, but she had seemed healthy and strong back then. The way she looked now, sat on the floor in front of him, she looked like she hadn't eaten anything for weeks; her clothes seemed loose on her, and they looked ragged and dirty as if she'd never taken them off. For the first time, Kylo saw how her hair looked when it wasn't tied back in that funny way she used to do it. It was wavy, a bit messy at the moment, he thought, and fell over her shoulders. The most noticeable difference from her usual appearance, however, was the metallic choker which she was wearing around her neck. A chain connected it to a pair of what he expected might be stun cuffs, binding her wrists together. Her hands seemed to be clutching something, though he couldn't see what it was from where he was standing.

Kylo eased his grip on his lightsaber. He knew that the choker was meant stop her from using the Force, but he was surprised at how well it was working. He could feel no Force presence besides his own in the room. Curious, he reached out with his mind, but as he'd expected, Skywalker had taught her how to protect her thoughts from other Force users, even when her own connection to the Force was limited. She probably did it unconsciously by now, just like he did.

In spite of the wall she'd put up around her thoughts, Kylo was still able to get a general sense of what she was feeling. He was surprised by the intense fear he sensed in her. When she had first faced him and his interrogation droid at Starkiller Base, her lack of fear in a position of complete vulnerability had impressed him. Now, the amount of angst he was detecting in her was strong enough to make him draw back into himself immediately, as if he'd been electrocuted. _Has a month in this room done that to her?_

"Don't be afraid," he said. "Stand up."

She shakenly did as he said. She had been staring at him with fearful eyes all this time, but in spite of his assurance that she had nothing to be afraid of, she now lowered her eyes to the ground as if she didn't dare look at him.

He took a step towards her, but to his surprise, she stepped back so quickly that she bumped into the wall in the corner of the room. Taken aback by her reaction, Kylo held up his hands as if to illustrate that he wasn't going to harm her: "I won't hurt you, Rey," he said, slowly and calmly.

Nevertheless, the girl still stood in the corner clenching her fists, eyes fixed to the floor. He realised that perhaps he should remove his mask, as she might find it intimidating. He recalled how she had once called him 'a creature in a mask', and he had taken it off to show her that he was human, just like her. Perhaps she needed another reminder. He lowered his hood, and slowly took the mask off with both hands, then placed it on the floor close to the door. As he was doing so, he noticed that Rey was now paying close attention to his every move.

Unsure what to do next, he said the first thing that came to mind: "Really, Rey, it's just me." He felt hurt that she'd be so scared of him. Used to everyone fearing him, he'd seen the girl's trust as pleasant change when they'd spoken to each other using the Force. That felt like a long time ago now.

Suddenly feeling the need to change the situation and lighten up the mood as quickly as possible, Kylo decided to remove the stun cuffs around her wrists. He raised his hands again, this time to use the Force. Rey, who had been staring at the floor, let out a small cry of shock as the cuffs fell to the ground before her.

"I'm sorry I cannot remove that," he said, and gestured towards the metal around her neck. "It would be stupid of me to allow you to use the Force. I'm sure you understand that."

Rey was looking at her wrists. They were red and bruised. They metal must have been cutting into her skin all the time she'd been wearing them. Kylo felt a pang of anger at whoever had decided that she needed to keep those on even though she was locked up and powerless. He made a mental note to find out who was responsible and make sure they'd regret it.

Wanting nothing but to comfort the hurting girl in front of him, Kylo took two steps closer to Rey, but quickly regretted it.

"Pl.. Please don't hurt me!" she whimpered, completely unlike her. She was speaking so quietly that he almost didn't hear what she said. When her words finally registered, he stared at her in disbelief.

" _Hurt_ you _?_ I've just taken of your cuffs and you think I'm going to _hurt_ you?" Kylo exclaimed, exasperated. As the apprentice of a Sith Lord and the master of the Knights of Ren, he wasn't used to treating everyone as generously as he'd treated Rey these last couple of minutes. _Doesn't she realise that?_

It hadn't been his meaning to sound angry, but he could see how his words made the girl shrink in front of him. She glanced up for a second, eyes wet with tears. His outburst had shocked and scared her even more, it seemed.

"I.. I'm sorry," she whispered. He noticed that her lips were quivering as she added: "I didn't m.. mean to… offend you, Master…"

No words could have made Kylo feel more frustrated or, indeed, offended. He didn't understand what he'd done wrong. Where was her usual spark? Her fierceness? Her power? When they had spoken using the Force, he had felt like she trusted him, like he had gained her confidence. Now she acted as if he was going to start torturing her any moment. Confused by these changes, and deep down slightly offended by her sudden fear of him, he turned around, picked up his mask, and left the room without another word.

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 **I'm already working on the next chapter so stay tuned!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Hi everyone, thank you so much for all the positive response I received after posting the first chapter! English isn't my first language, and I've never written a fanfic before, so I'm very happy that people liked it. This chapter is probably going to be among the darkest chapters in this story, so brace yourselves! Enjoy!**

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Rey sank to her knees. Her entire body was shaking. The tears she'd been holding back flowed freely down her face now, hot drops falling on her hands. Surprised, she realised that she'd been clenching her fists all this time, and quickly released her grip on the now rather deformed dolls she had been holding. In a sudden burst of anger, she let out a scream and threw them against the wall in the far side of the room.

 _How did I allow myself to let him see me like this?, s_ he thought. _I'm supposed to be strong. Master Skywalker expects it of me. General Organa expects it of me. The entire Resistance expects it of me. And Finn..._ She took a deep gulp at the thought of the first person she had ever thought of as a friend. _Finn expects it of me. And I've failed him._

Feeling a sudden pang of restlessness, she got up and started pacing around the small room. When she'd first woken up on the bed, she'd felt that it was a rather large room for a prisoner. That must have been about a month ago now. Rey had lost track of the days after the first week, although a small display next to the door always let her know what time of the day it was.

She had quickly realised that she had been taken prisoner – shackled as she was – but it didn't discourage her much at the time. After all, she had voluntarily walked right into the arms of the First Order, fully convinced that she would be able to bring Ben Solo back with her. During her first days in the cell, she had whole-heartedly expected him to walk in at any moment, so she could persuade him to embrace the Light again, to be who he truly was. _You're on a mission_ , she had told herself, _and you're not going to let anything discourage you!_

Most days had been spent exercising in her room. It was a task not easily doable with tied hands, yet Rey had thought positively off her impairment. After all, she thought, she might learn some new skills training like this, and Master Skywalker seemed to have managed just fine with one hand; surely, she could overcome these cuffs and chains.

For Rey, training meant jumping jacks, push ups, and handstands against the walls. She happily ran back and forth from one wall to another, planked on the floor, and did pull ups in the shower pod. After she'd eaten her lunch – a small portion of bread and water brought to her by unfriendly droids, - she would practise tai chi or work on her meditation skills. Overall, it wasn't _a lot_ less exciting than searching through junk all day.

Once in a while, a real human being would enter her cell to clean the place, empty her trash cans, or change her bedding. This was the best time of the day, Rey thought. Some of the servants weren't very talkative, but that didn't stop her in any way. She would follow them around while they completed their tasks, (this always reminded her of following Master Skywalker around on Ahch-To), and babble on endlessly about anything that struck her mind.

Rey knew quite a bit about surviving; not talking to anyone for a long period of time could drive a person mad, and she didn't know for how long the First Order planned on holding her captive in that small room. With that in mind, Rey had kept talking, and within a couple of days, all of the servants knew everything there was to know about life on Jakku, the Millennium Falcon, the Rebellion, BB-8, even the grumpy fish nuns from Ahch-To. Once she even went as far as to tell a young woman cleaning her toilet, - the servant she had seen most often, - about the time when she accidentally saw Kylo Ren without his shirt on. The woman had struck Rey as being melancholic and quiet, but once she heard that story, she burst out laughing so hard that she eventually started coughing, making Rey afraid that she might actually choke. She was fine, though, and they quickly became friends.

The woman's name was Isa. She had long black hair which she always wore tied in a bun on the back of her head, and her uniform was the same as the rest of the servants, black and simple. She started spending more and more time cleaning Rey's room, while the two of them talked about everything and nothing. She told Rey that she had been raising an eight-year-old son alone on Nar Shaddaa, when one day soldiers of the First Order had entered her home and taken the boy away from her. He was to be trained as a pilot, they told her, and she would now have to work as a servant aboard the _Supremacy,_ without any knowledge of her son's whereabouts or his well-being _._ In an attempt to comfort the woman, Rey had told her the story of how Finn had escaped Starkiller Base and joined the Rebels. The thought seemed cheer Isa up a bit, and she had sent Rey a grateful smile before leaving that day.

During the evenings, Rey always got bored of training. At six o'clock, a droid would serve her dinner (always consisting of bread and water), and after that she would be left to her own thoughts. She had started worrying that something might have happened to Ben on Crait, since he hadn't come to see her. She didn't know if she expected him to try to interrogate her again, or if he was going to try to convince her to join the Dark Side, but she knew that she wasn't scared of him at all, and that right now, any company would be welcome. Normally, she would have been able to sense his presence on the _Supremacy_ using the Force, but that ability had been taken away from her by the metal device around her neck. In her boredom, she had started worrying that he wasn't even on the ship anymore, and that the gruesome alien Snoke planned for her to rot in here by herself for all eternity.

Now, thinking back on these first weeks in the cell, Rey wished that she would have been more appreciative of being left alone. It wasn't like she had been a lot lonelier on the _Supremacy_ than on Jakku, and, at least during that period of time, she had felt hopeful of what was to come. In no way could she have imagined what the First Order had in store for her.

X

The night that things had changed was vivid in her mind, although she tried not to think of it. She had been in her cell for ten, maybe eleven, days. At that point, it had already felt like she'd spent a month in there; as she knew very well, time passes slowly when you do the same thing every day. That evening, she'd been lying on her bed, bored of exercising yet not tired enough to go to sleep, when she had heard the familiar whooshing sound of the door to her room opening. Faster than the speed of light, she had jumped out of her bed. She was now standing next to it, facing a person she'd never seen before.

The man who had walked in to her room was tall and broad shouldered. His shiny red hair was cut short and slicked back, and stood in great contrast to his bone white face. He was objectively beautiful, she though; his face was clean shaven, his cheekbones high and marked, and his jaw looked like it had been cut in marble. He was human and dressed in all black, just like the people who used to clean her room. Yet, they never came in the evenings, and this man didn't have the appearance of a servant; the expression on his face was one of authority, and he held himself like a military man. He wore what she assumed was a lieutenant's or perhaps a general's uniform: matching knee-long coat and breeches, gloves, shiny boots, and a perfectly polished buckle around his waist.

"Who are you?" she asked, tilting her head and furrowing her brows, hoping that she would give off the impression that she wasn't afraid of him.

The man eyed her up and down, taking in her appearance in the same way that she had been taking in his. With a few slow, long strides, he came closer to her. His face suddenly twisted in anger, taking Rey by a surprise: "Why would a dirty looking scavenger whore like you think that you have the right to question a General of the First Order, when you haven't been spoken to?" he sneered, and stepped so close to Rey that it made her uncomfortable. "Do _none_ of Luke Skywalker's apprentices know how to show their superiors respect? Or are Jedis simply _too good_ to learn basic manners?" he spat.

Rey was completely taken aback by his aggressiveness; she was an enemy of the First Order, so naturally people here would dislike her, but she really hadn't expected a General to call her a 'scavenger whore' to her face in such a manner. His pronunciation was slow and clear, his accent pleasant to her ears, yet his words had made her blush and look down; that kind of obscene language wasn't something she had heard often, especially not used when describing _her._

With determination she decided to ignore his rudeness and her embarrassment and cut straight to the chase: "Where is Kylo Ren? I demand to see him!" She was staring back up at him now, a defiant look on her face, the adrenaline pumping through her veins.

The man let out a fleeting laugh, which never reached his eyes, and started speaking in a low, amused tone, ridiculing her: "Why, are you expecting him to come here and let you escape the way he did the last time? Is that your strategy?"

He must have caught a glimpse of uncertainty in her eyes at his words, because he suddenly raised his eyebrows in genuine surprise and laughed out loud, for real this time: "Oh no, don't tell me... you turned up here thinking that you could turn him to your side! That you'd escape together!" She looked away at this comment, embarrassed that he'd read her mind. "Well, let me tell you something; if that was his plan all along, he forgot about you at some point during the execution of it. He left this base after the battle of Crait, and I don't imagine we'll see him here again anytime soon," he added, a cruel look in his eyes.

"You're lying!" she exclaimed and clenched her fists, making the chains rattle. "He would never leave me here, I know it!" Although she spoke the words with a force as if she meant them, in her chest she felt a pang of anxiety: _What if he is speaking the truth? What will happen to me?_

"Oh, so you think the two of you know each other! Trust me, I've heard all about your little 'Force connection'" he added, and looked at her with a mixture of arrogance and what seemed like genuine confusion: "Did you really think he spent time talking to you because he what- _liked you?_ In that case you really _are_ more foolish than I would have expected. Supreme Leader Snoke and Ren set that up; they lured you here, knowing that you would go like a lamb to the slaughter."

Rey's heart was beating so fast that she felt like it might pop out of her chest. _Could it really be true? Had it all been a calculated move from Ben's side? The vulnerability she had detected in him, the inner turmoil... Had it been an act all along?_

He smirked maliciously. "The Supreme Leader will have you brought to him. He will either torture you or persuade you to join the Order. If you refuse, you're useless to us. He will kill you." His eyes were deprived of all empathy as he finished speaking.

Rey felt miserable at the prospect he was describing. The man's expression softened a bit, as he looked down over her again. Rey detected something she couldn't recognise in his gaze. Curiosity? Appreciation? No, it was something else…

"He will kill you. Unless of course … We find something else to use you for." He smiled again and came closer, causing her to step back once again. This time she felt the cold wall against her back, and realised with dissatisfaction that she was out of room.

With eyes that never met hers, the general raised his right hand and curled his long fingers around the chain connecting the device around her neck to the stun cuffs restraining her wrists. He was admiring her body, face so close to hers that she could hear him breathing. Rey was baffled and embarrassed at what he was implying and his sudden closeness.

"What… what _on Earth_ are you doing? Let go of me!" she exclaimed with indignation.

An arrogant smirk crossed the tall man's pale face. He tightened his hold on the chain and pulled her closer to him, pinning her between him and the wall. "And what will you do, Jedi? Use the Force on me?" Shocked, she felt his other hand grip her waist and start moving down to her hips as he laughed at her. "Without the Force, you're nothing. Just another woman, weak and powerless." His pale face was just inches from hers. She felt her anger and resentment towards the man boil inside her.

 _My hands might be tied, but the rest of me isn't._

With a sudden flash of movement, she kneed him in the groin. With a loud grunt, he let her go and bend over in pain. Eyeing another opportunity, she stepped around him and used her metal cuffs to hit him in the back of the head. The impact didn't knock him out completely; he was on his knees on the floor, grabbing the edge of her bed and groaning in pain. Usually, this would be a good time to run away, but Rey knew that she had to find some sort of key or card for the door before she could get out.

Concentrated and full of determination, she stepped closer to the man. Her arms were raised, ready to knock him out if he tried to attack her. She was close enough to stick a hand in the pocket of his coat when he unexpectedly, and with what seemed like quite some difficulty, pushed himself up on his arms and turned around, towering above her with a face full of rage. Something shiny caught her eyes from between his fingers.

 _He's armed._ It was the last thought to cross her mind, before a jolt of electricity was sent through her body, springing from the stun cuffs around her wrists. It didn't hurt as such, but the electric shock was enough to numb her entire nervous system. She fell to the ground, unable to move. Her body shook as her muscles contracted involuntarily over and over again. Dazed and unable to think clearly, she felt herself being lifted from the floor and thrown face down on to the bed.

Gasping for breath she lay there shivering. A heavy weight pressed down on top of her, and she had to stretch her arms out above her head as her chain was jerked forcefully in that direction. Her muscles stopped shivering, but they felt weak and tired as if she'd trekked through the desert for hours without pause. Above her head, an arm was pinning both of hers down. Slowly, she realised what was going on, as she felt another hand pulling at her pants. "No.." she gasped out, breathing heavily.

The memory of what had happened next seemed clouded in confusion and pain. She had tried fighting, but to no avail. The General on top of her was much bigger and heavier than her, and she couldn't move. Usually, she relied on the Force to help her against attackers if she didn't have her staff or lightsaber, and if not the Force, then her own strength. Her body was useless to her now, however, and the Force seemed to be constantly out of her reach.

To her great humiliation, she had felt pushed so far that she had started begging and pleading with the man out of desperation, but the only response she had received was his heavy breathing close to her face and the occasional sound of arousal escaping his lips. At some point he even let out a bit of laughter as he forced himself into her, grabbing her waist, her hair, or her breasts with his free hand. Tears had run down her cheeks due to the humiliation and the pain caused by the forceful and unwelcome intrusion, which her body was not prepared for in any way. All she could was clench her teeth and claw at the sheets as he continued his cruel abuse.

After a while, she had stopped fighting, thinking that he was going to finish eventually, and that if she relaxed her body, the assault might hurt less. She had been wrong, though; she quickly found that she was unable to relax at all, and eventually just had to suffer through the degradation. Finally, he had stopped thrusting. He held her even tighter, tight enough to leave bruises, as he pressed deeper into her and let out a groan of pleasure. Feeling sick to her stomach she felt him finish inside her.

For a while, he just lay there on top of her, panting. Eventually, he removed himself and climbed off the bed. He was moving around, but she clenched her eyes shut and continued to grip the sheets hard. Although she soon heard the doors open and close, she waited for a long time before she dared roll onto her back.

She hadn't cried that night. Staring at the ceiling, her head had been empty of all thoughts. When Isa had come to clean her room the next day, Rey hadn't spoken to her, but had stayed curled up on the bed. Isa had let her be, thinking that she was having a bad day.

Now, thinking back at these event, Rey cried desperately. The General had returned to her room many times since then, always treating her horribly. He would hurt her and assault her, take out all of his aggressions on her. She had learned by now to be ready in a kneeling position when he entered her room, and to refer to him as 'General', to show him the respect which he thought he deserved. If she tried to fight him, he would simply activate her stun cuffs until she was lying helpless on the floor. Sometimes she attempted to plea with him, but he always ignored her. The only time he spoke to her was when he felt particularly frustrated about something, or when he taunted her for thinking that Kylo Ren would have wanted to do anything but abuse her, had he actually cared enough to stay.

The General spoke quite a lot about Kylo Ren, she'd noticed. He seemed to hate him with a passion, alongside anything or anyone related to the Force in some way. She had heard him make extremely malicious comments about him; most of them seemed to stem from jealousy, but Rey also got the feeling that some of them were based on a sincere, deeply-rooted fear of Kylo's abilities.

Hearing him talk about Kylo like that had had a notable impact on Rey. She had started to believe his stories, believe that there was nothing left of the Ben that she had come here to save. Otherwise, why would he had left her in this endless cycle of abuse?

It was all a plan to make her suffer, to break her sprit, according to the General. So far, the plan had been successful; now that Kylo was finally back, Rey felt nothing but fear. She knew in her heart that he, too, would hurt and abuse her. Yet, he had taken off her stun cuffs and told her not to fear him...

 _Was that all just a part of the act? Or does he really… care?_


End file.
